Fire and Light
by adulterclavis
Summary: She woke to the protests of her entire body at whatever excuse for a bed she was sleeping on, to the burn of a deep wound across the nape of her neck and down her spine, to an aching feeling of something lost that was frankly more alarming than anything having to do with not knowing where she was or how she'd gotten there. Weird fantasy AU of my own design.
1. I'm waking up to ash and dust

Soul woke to a boot in his ribs and an annoyed, "Get up."

It was a few hours before dawn, to judge by his tower room's narrow window.

"You're to go with the Fourth," said the man who'd kicked him, and Soul squinted up at him through the light of the mage-lantern on his belt, made out red hair that was nonetheless not as brilliant and damningly carmine as his own eyes, and grumbled an irate, inchoate query that earned him the kind of scowl that meant he was coming close to getting kicked again.

"_Why_ is none of your business," the man said, and Soul dragged himself into a sitting position, scrubbing his hands over his face and back through his hair in a futile effort to get the ghost-pale tufts out of his immediate field of vision. "All you need to know is that the battle-mages think themselves clever and have mounted a covert attack on the city. You're going to intercept and kill them before they can reach the fortress, which seems to be their goal. Get into your armor and report to the Fourth at Temple Square."

"Unless you're going to help me with my armor, go the fuck away, Spirit," Soul growled, wobbling a bit when he stood and stumbled the few steps it took to get to the opposite end of his room where his armor sat.

Green eyes narrowed. "I could have you flogged for insubordination," the older man said, earning an irate snort from Soul, caught halfway through pulling on his undershirt.

"You could have me flogged for no reason at all, don't trouble yourself with finding one," Soul said, fumbling with uncooperative leather. "Don't you have someplace better to be?"

Spirit did, and left with one last warning that Soul had better get his sorry carcass to Temple Square without delay.

Soul had gotten dressed, abandoned all hope of breakfast, and realized only after he got into his armor that he had to pee - was in fact halfway to the damn temple - when a few things clicked into place in his head and he came to a stuttering stop in the city's dark streets, boots scuffing across wet cobble. Primarily what stopped him was his brain reminding him that the battle-mages, in centuries of war, had never once drawn this close to Death City, not even with all the magic that Medusa and the other witches could bring to their aid. That was with good reason: Shinigami's presence there was too strong, and his son too powerful, for their enemies to have ever even located the sprawling fortress-city, let alone mounted any kind of attack on it. Even Asura, blood traitor that he was, could not show Arachne and Medusa the city of his birth; he would never be able to see or return to it again, so long as his father and brother wished him in exile.

That they apparently _had_ made it into the city and not the abandoned necropolis that it masqueraded as meant that someone, somewhere, had leaked some very critical information and quite possibly an artifact or two.

Soul broke into an uneasy jog, dread creeping into his stomach. He wasn't keen on joining up with the Fourth, but at least with them he'd have numbers going for him. Getting caught alone by battle-mages was _not_ how he wanted to die, even if things seemed too peaceful for the moment. It _was _awfully quiet, though, considering the fact that the bulk of the soldiers had to have been mobilized nearly an hour before Spirit had bothered to wake Soul up. All Soul could hear as he drew near the temple was the slap of his booted feet and the rain that had begun right around the time he left the fortress, and his steps slowed the closer he got because the quiet was rapidly changing from reassuring to very, very alarming.

On the one hand, Soul didn't have time to deal with an unfounded attack of nerves; on the other, ignoring instinctive reactions got people killed. He stopped again and slipped into an alley, pressed his back to a wall and took a long, slow breath. His sense of the earth beneath his feet was as solid as it had ever been, and through it he could feel the dim buzz of the other Weapons in Temple Square, wet and tired but not in danger, not alarmed. He'd lived too long in a hostile environment to be jumping at shadows, so once his heart had slowed to something approaching normal he stepped out of the alleyway and moved forward again, the Temple spire looming above -

He was still too far away for the explosion to knock him off his feet, but he felt the rumble and practically went blind at the flash of fire, had to shake his head to dispel a rush of panic. Before he could make a conscious decision he'd shifted his fingertips to claws and leapt, clambering up the nearest wall in a rush that had nothing to do with tactics and everything to do with instinct. The rooftops would be safer, no one looked up for threats, and he sprinted across wet shingles, leaping gaps with a disregard for things like traction and where he might land that probably would have earned him a dressing-down had anyone cared about whether or not he broke his fool neck.

There were no more explosions after that but there was _fire_ and the flash of lightning, and a sickening flare of battle-mage power that made his stomach do outraged loops. He shook the feeling off as best he could, stumbling a little on a landing and nearly twisting an ankle, and didn't shift his hands back, because he was running into a fight and fingers like blades came in handy. When he at last reached the square he came to a skidding halt on the edge of a roof overlooking it, one wrist pressed to his mouth in revulsion at the scene below.

Soul had been raised on horror stories about the enemy, how their magic was a perversion of the natural order, how the witches wanted to consume and destroy the magic that made up the very foundation of the world. How Medusa and Arachne had betrayed them, had corrupted Shinigami's eldest son, would do anything to secure all three of the power focuses on Ragnarock's prison because they didn't understand what would happen should they weaken it too far.

More than anything, though, he heard stories of Medusa's battle-mages, whose magic his people were not resistant to as they were the witches'. He had grown up with stories of the Reaper, who destroyed whole legions with fire, a woman who seldom executed an attack that did not kill. Now that he was older he listened to his so-called brothers mutter about the Reaper's daughter, whom they called Scourge, a woman who threw fire and lightning and searing light at her opponents and whose every move seemed to result in catastrophe. Certainly he'd seen the ranks of his fellows dwindle, and Kid had always exhorted them to display especial courage and focus when it came to effecting her death.

He'd honestly believed they were exaggerating. Not in a way deserving of his ridicule but in the way soldiers did, building an already legitimate enemy into a legend.

He'd been wrong.

The only reason the square was illuminated was because there was fire everywhere, creeping along the awnings of shops towards the buildings and consuming the corpses strewn across the cobblestones with sullen determination that defied the weather. Steady rain had also done little to diminish the fact that the entire square seemed painted in blood, and Soul swallowed bile. There was only a moment to notice details, though: there was a battle still raging on the blood-slick temple steps, a dozen or more of his kin throwing themselves against a single slight figure with a fervor Soul could only label _desperation_.

Well, the Scourge was in the city; if there was ever a time for desperation, this was it. Soul slipped off the roof, one eye towards the fight, and got down to the ground via a series of windowsills with only minimal scrambling despite the distinct tremor that had begun in his hands. So long as he was undetected he had the advantage, or at least a chance of survival, and maybe he didn't like Shinigami and maybe his kin had treated him like an unwanted, possibly rabid dog his whole life, but he didn't want it to end like this. As soon as his feet hit the ground he ducked underneath the closest stall, hoping that the fire consuming its awning wouldn't force him out of hiding before he came up with some sort of plan.

He _wanted_ to wait until she was done, try and ambush her from hiding as she moved through the city, but that was, he knew, more of a result of the fact that he was fucking _terrified_ than because it was a valid plan. Going after her when she wasn't distracted was asking for it, because she'd be certain to realize he was there before he could get a hit in, and as soon as her attention focused on him he was a dead man.

Soul had come up with no less suicidal option than rushing headfirst into the fray when she leapt out of the crowd of enemies mobbing her in a perfect, high arc, landing in the lower tier of the square's pond-sized fountain. Her attackers took the movement as retreat and surged forward in an angry rush of limbs shifted into razor-sharp blades, prompting her turn and climb up the fountain spire, where she waited, crouched low, watching them from a height of some ten feet.

It was all the opportunity he was going to get, since calling blades out of the stone at her feet might skewer the others and would give him away besides. Soul dashed forward as the other Weapons formed a wary circle and waded into the fountain, fumbling earth magic into armor that might thwart enough of her attacks to keep him from dying on the spot should she target him. He was halfway to the middle of the fountain when he saw her smile.

The hair on his arms stood up and he remembered - fire and _lightning_, and he was standing in a _fucking fountain_ -

He gave up on earth-armor and fucking _grounded _himself in time to avoid the full force of the attack, though the shock still locked his jaw and limbs for a stunning, incredibly painful heartbeat. The others did not fare as well, but Soul couldn't waste time dwelling on that. Instead he forced uncooperative limbs to move while the Scourge stood in a lithe movement and indulged in a derisive snort, strained upwards and buried fumbling, blade-tipped fingers in the meat of her calf. She shrieked and stumbled, and Soul had to snap all of his effort from staying grounded enough to resist lightning back into maintaining some semblance of armor because her response was _fire._

His response was scythe-blades erupting from the stone of the fountain, which shocked her into jumping away - or trying, anyway. Her leg was too injured to function and Soul still had ahold of it, so the attempt was cut ingloriously short by Soul's shoulder refusing to come fully out of its socket. She twisted as she fell, and Soul had another instant where he was certain his heart had stopped when glass-green eyes met his, promising death, and he didn't even know _how_ to defend against the light that began to collect in her open palm -

Her head hit the side of the fountain with a sickening crack and the light winked out of existence, leaving Soul with a hammering heart, a shoulder he thought might never work again, and the distinct feeling that he'd somehow cheated death. For something like a full minute he didn't move, just stayed half-sprawled in the fountain heedless of the fact that its water was slowly being replaced by blood, and tried to remember how to breathe, tried to comprehend the reality of what he'd just done, tried not to be sick from stress and pain.

What ultimately snapped him out of his stupor was not the fact that he _knew_ he didn't have much time to deal with the woman whose leg his fingers were still embedded in, nor the all-eclipsing pain in his shoulder; it was the coalescing of the souls of the dead, faint silver light fighting against the fire's sullen gleam on the water.

Soul watched them gather, confused by the sudden violence of their deaths, guttering flames strengthening into a steady glow as they drifted up and away, heading towards the fortress in the encroaching dawn. The Weapon-souls he sighed over; the battle-mage souls made him swallow hard as they fought the pull of Shinigami and Kid's magic - but he'd been taught often and painfully over the course of his life that only Shinigami, his son, and a select few elite warriors, Spirit among them, were allowed to consume the souls of their vanquished enemies. It'd never made sense to Soul that a practice that made Weapons so much stronger should be forbidden to the vast majority of them, but he'd always supposed it had something to do with control.

Still, no use wasting time gawking. He set aside his twisting stomach and managed to get his legs under him properly without aggravating his wounds too much, then grabbed the Scourge's leg with his good arm - the left, _why_ did he have to go putting his dominant arm in the line of fire - and dragged her still-unconscious body close enough so that he could attempt to free his arm. It took longer than he wanted to manage it, but a cursory shove against his shoulder and then his elbow afterwards didn't result in the vision-whitening snap of a joint popping back into place, so Soul was inclined to count that a victory. At least his legs seemed uninjured, stable enough after a few minutes of blank staring that he didn't fall when he climbed out of the fountain, hauling his enemy's body along with his one functional arm and doing his best not to give her another head injury in the process.

If she was going to insist on not dying - and if the initial hit to her head hadn't done it, he had no illusions that time would finish the job, not given the way her kind supposedly recovered from wounds - then he was going to insist on getting _something_ out of this suicide mission. Slitting her throat would only mean that no one would believe him when he claimed to have fought and killed the Scourge. Better to capture her alive, be seen carrying her into the fortress and down to the dungeons, and if he wanted to manage that he was going to have to move quickly lest she wake up and finish him off.

With that thought in mind, Soul draped her across the fountain wall, arms still dangling in the water, and hooked the blades of his left hand into the - ridiculously tough, what did Medusa _make_ it out of - leather of her armor right at the nape of her neck. It took more effort than he liked and a foot braced against the low wall but he managed to claw his way through, opening up her armor in a line that followed her spine from neck to hips. He was out of breath at the end, and would have been sweating if it wasn't pouring fucking buckets, but there no point pondering how out of shape he'd become after a few months cooling his heels in Death City while Kid tried to decide if he could be bent to his will or not. He caught her padded jacket with gentler claws and tore at that, too, at last exposing the tattoo, seething with nauseating witch-magic, that curled over the nape of her neck and down part of her spine.

It was a pretty thing, for all that the magic that imbued it made his stomach roil, bold calligraphic lines that gave physical form to a bit of impressively complicated magic. Soul stared at it for a moment, committing the firelit lines to memory, then pressed his claws to the skin just above it with a frown as he collected his own magic in his fingertips. He'd been taught that this required attention to form, that he should etch Shinigami's sigil into the skin of his enemies, but he'd seen it done once before and no such technique had been employed. He was dooming her to a slow death by cutting her off from the magic that kept her alive; Soul saw no need to add insult to grave injury by branding her with her enemy's mark, and so he flexed his fingers till blood welled around the blades and dragged them across and through the mark and its magic until his skin crawled with it.

He knew when the link broke, as much because the clammy feeling left his skin as because some vital _something_ seemed to leave the woman in front of him, a held breath let go, some strange draining of vigor from her complexion despite the fact that the light was questionable at best. Not surprising, he guessed, though perhaps a touch disturbing, though that might have been the fact that he'd just shortened her lifespan to a few weeks at the outside. Such was war, though, and she'd gotten better treatment at his hands than she'd probably have gotten from anyone else. The others would have slit her throat and to hell with any potential glory involved in bringing her in alive; the Scourge was simply too dangerous to let live. Perhaps that made him foolish.

It wasn't worth worrying about, so Soul washed his hands as best he could in the clouding water of the fountain and nearly wept at the pain involved in negotiating the woman's slight form up and over his shoulders so he could carry her back. She was a tiny thing, this supposed legend, hardly up to his collarbones and anything but threatening once she'd been robbed of the ability to kill him with one negligent strike of her magic. That didn't confer much of a sense of security, though, and Soul allowed himself only one grim look back at the carnage in the square before he began his plodding return to the fortress.

* * *

By the time Soul reached the fortress gates and had to deal with the guards, he was well past thinking that getting incredulous stares as he dragged the Scourge down to the dungeons would be an enjoyable experience; more than anything he just wanted to forget that the whole cursed morning had happened and go back to bed. The guards stared, disbelieving, and tried to stop him, and Soul was just tired, tired and covered in blood and his shoulder felt like it would never work again, so he didn't really bother trying to play nice.

"Get the fuck back," he growled when they tried to bar his way, tried to tell him that he'd have to wait while they fetched someone higher up the chain of command, and he wondered, distantly, if perhaps he'd inhaled more smoke than he thought for his voice to have become so hoarse.

They shied away enough for him to push past, and maybe it was the fact that he'd bared all of his pointed teeth when he spoke and maybe it was the blood dripping all down his shoulders from his unconscious cargo, but they didn't try anything when he did.

It didn't stop them from running to tell on him, though, and Soul was about halfway to the dungeons when someone dared step in front of him again.

This time it wasn't a guard, though, and Soul stopped, scowling as viciously as his battered state would allow.

"Brother," Wes said, and Soul hated, _hated_, the way his brother's eyes had changed color to a dark, dried-blood shade when he submitted to Shinigami, "what have you done? What happened?"

"Spirit sent me to the Fourth," Soul growled, baring his teeth again just because his brother's were so glaringly no longer pointed. "I almost made it to Temple Square before the Scourge set it on fire. She killed everyone there, lured the survivors of the explosion into the fountain and hit them with lightning. I tripped her up and she hit her head and here we are, and if you don't mind I'd like to get her into a cell so I can get my shoulder seen to, because it feels like it's been torn apart."

Wes stared at him in silence just long enough for Soul to really want to punch him, then said, "What are you playing at, brother? What are you trying to accomplish with this?"

"What the fuck are you _on_ about?" Soul growled, the fingers of his right hand flexing in impotent anger. "I knocked her out, it seemed a waste to just kill her when I could bring her in alive. I've broken her link to the witch, why would I have left her there? She destroyed too many of us for me to feel like killing her would be even trade. Let Kid execute her, I don't care; but make sure they know who brought her in, who fought her to a standstill. I want everyone to know that it was me who defeated the greatest warrior the enemy has ever had, Wes, so don't you go telling Kid anything but the truth."

"You think you can win their trust without doing what I did," Wes said, and his tone was not unkind, his eyes almost sympathetic. "For this, I can't say you won't. But Kid will still know, and Shinigami, and Spirit and Azusa and the other Death Scythes."

"I don't care what they think," Soul said, shifting under the Scourge's weight and wishing more than anything for a bath. "I just want to be treated like I have a right to exist. Why the hell would you think I care what Kid thinks of me? You were brought up with the same beliefs I was, brother; Mother would weep if she saw you now, bowing to the death god. Let me by, before the Scourge wakes up. If you want to help, send someone down to the dungeons with some fresh bedding and food for the both of us, since I'm sure no one's on guard duty down there."

"I hope this ends the way you want it to," Wes said, and stepped aside, eyes unfathomable as Soul pushed past him, glaring.

* * *

Though he'd initially thought to deposit his prize in a cell and be on his way to the medic, Soul decided halfway there that he would probably be better served taking the Scourge with him, if only because it was really a job for someone with two functioning arms to divest the woman of her weapons and armor and make sure she didn't have any life-threatening wounds. Not that the medic _liked_ it, especially once he realized what Soul wanted him to do and who he was tending to, but Soul's glare was enough to cow him. It was probably the blood, though he supposed it might have been the fact that he dragged the man out of bed without even the slightest consideration for the hour.

Still, he got a sling for his shoulder, dry clothes, and assurances that he would heal if he could manage to rest his arm, underlaid heavily with the implication that his freakish lineage was the only reason it had any chance of healing properly or quickly. That was fine; Soul was used to it. He _did_ heal fast, one of the few advantages he had, and he was more than willing to take what bonuses he could from being descended from a man commonly regarded as contagiously insane.

The Scourge was another matter, one that the doctor wasn't pleased with having to deal with, but she was unconscious and obviously no longer a danger and so he consented with only moderate complaint, rolling his eyes at the mess Soul had made of her armor in favor of actually undoing the buckles and laces and pulling her out of it the same way she must have gone in. He left her in her undershirt and soft breeches, pronounced her unharmed aside from the head trauma, her mangled calf, and the wound Soul had inflicted to remove her from her magic, and told Soul quite bluntly to remove himself and his prize from his infirmary before he called someone to do it for him. Soul rolled his eyes near to give himself a headache, got the woman situated across his shoulders again with some help from the doctor, and resumed his trek downwards.

It was a long walk, too, considering that his people had worshipped a death god and been at war for a lot longer than living memory could recall. Beneath the fortress and the city was a real necropolis, set up as much to house the honored dead as to serve the death god and his necromancer children. Soul trekked through halls of bone, door arches capped with skulls, walls gilded in intricate patterns of femurs, recited in his head the names of the bones as he identified them: radius, ulna, tibia, fibula, clavicle, scapula, all arrayed in dizzying designs and harboring a silent magic that lay heavy on his skin like the hush of snow, waiting to be disturbed.

Down and down he went, reciting bones in his head, mandible, maxilla, patella, sacrum, increasingly jittery over time after almost dying and skin-crawlingly aware of the burden he carried. He tried to convince himself that he just wanted to resume his interrupted sleep, but what he really wanted to do was _collapse_, have a little breakdown about the entirety of his morning and then sleep because at least if he was asleep he wouldn't have to think about it.

His feet kept moving, though, and he finally reached the door to the prison to find that the only word in his head was _cranium,_ because there were skulls leering at him from the door arch as he fumbled the lock while trying not to drop his awkward cargo. Eventually he wrestled the door open and stumbled through, grumbling at the shriek of old hinges and then blinking in surprise when he found himself standing in a warm pool of light. Wes _had_ sent someone ahead of him, it seemed, if the place was lit up; normally the dungeon stayed dark and vacant, as his people were not in the habit of taking prisoners.

There was food on the rough guards' table and small magical lights along the wall, fresh straw-stuffed mattresses in two of the cells, and all Soul could think was that _he could have told whoever brought this stuff to stay_. Wes had helped, but only just enough; Soul still had to manage with one good arm and no one to assist, no one to guard the enemy's most dangerous soldier but him, and certainly no reward. No surprise, that. He was just glad that his brother had thought to have food left, because he'd never gotten breakfast and his belly was more than willing to remind him of that fact.

Food would have to wait just a little longer, though. Soul shuffled over to the cell furthest from the door and somehow managed to deposit his burden onto the mattress without hurting either of them, though it was a near thing with the strange contortions required to succeed at the maneuver. Once she was arranged on the cot in a reasonably comfortable position he returned to the guard area, securing manacles and leg shackles once he'd made sure the key hung beside them actually worked.

He bound the woman who had once been one of the greatest threats his people had ever faced, and once it was done he stared down at her for a few minutes, scowling at her incongruous appearance, wishing she looked like the monster she was. So deadly and so - delicate, almost, despite the blood on her and the fact that he'd seen her take down a whole group of his people in one grotesque sweep. She was a pretty thing, really, small and finely built, hair in wild disarray where it wasn't matted with blood, and the moment Soul realized he thought she was attractive when she wasn't posing an active threat to his continued existence he removed himself from the cell with all possible haste, the door shutting behind him with the heavy clatter of a setting lock.

He decided not to dwell on that traitorous sentiment and focused instead on eating the bread and cheese that had been left on the table, which had the added bonus of getting him away from the woman who'd nearly killed him multiple times in the space of five minutes. Eating with his left hand was annoying and Soul would have given a lot to have avoided entirely the circumstances that led to his right arm being bound in place against his chest, but things had turned out rather well, considering. That Spirit or whoever had given Spirit his orders had likely intended Soul to go out and get himself killed was a fact that wasn't lost on him, but he'd gotten used to that over the years. They'd been trying to kill him since he was old enough to fight, sending him half-trained against the strongest battle-mages Medusa had to throw at them in the hope that he'd take out a few key players in the process of dying, that perhaps his bad blood would win them an important victory in the process of being snuffed out.

Not yet, and not today. They'd sent him to die and he'd brought back their greatest enemy, save the witch; perhaps Kid would let him be now, send him back to the front lines where he wasn't being watched all the time, where he could at least die doing something genuinely useful instead of cooling his heels while Shinigami's son tried to convince him that becoming a lich would cure him of his inevitable madness. He had no doubt that it would, if only because sacrificing all free will tended to negate the effects of madness on one's behavior, at least. That it would have left him trapped inside his own head as he spiraled into insanity seemed unimportant to everyone but him, which made sense, he guessed. After all, _they_ wouldn't suffer for it.

Soul finished the food and settled back into the rickety chair with a sigh, kneading his tender shoulder with a wince. It would be a while mending, even given that he healed faster than most, and that kind of injury would make every moment of the recovery unpleasant. It hurt in a way that made him wonder again just where Spirit had gone, what had been more important than the fact that the Scourge was in their city. They might want him dead, but that wasn't worth letting the likes of _her_ run around. Where had Spirit been, where was Marie?

He decided that sleeping was a better use of his time than wondering why nothing made sense, and heaved himself out of the chair to curl up on the cot in the cell next to his prisoner's.


	2. The ghost in you, she don't fade

Okay, I had kind of forgotten how this site worked.

Warnings, somewhat belated: violence and some derogatory language/attitudes/what have you that spring from a war that's been going on for a hella long time. Uh. Language, I suppose. Angst and drama and what have you will just be par for the course, though I am angling for a good(?) end. There is some kind of sideways mentioning of torture, and I mean some people are undead, and the mind games - okay. I'll just call it as covered as my scattered brain can manage.

I don't think I will ever be content with this chapter, but I have been assured by multiple people that it's good, so here it is.

* * *

She woke to the protests of her entire body at whatever excuse for a bed she was sleeping on, to the burn of a deep wound across the nape of her neck and down her spine, to an aching feeling of something lost that was frankly more alarming than anything having to do with not knowing where she was or how she'd gotten there. There was a heaviness to her wrists and ankles, a rough chill that bespoke chains, and when she opened her eyes there was nothing above her but dark stone blocks illuminated by the steady sullen glow of a poorly-made mage-light. A dungeon, then, and the pulsing ache in her skull made her think that there was a reason why she couldn't remember how she'd gotten there or, for that matter, how she'd been hurt, exactly. The memory was there, but fuzzy, too indistinct to do much more than taunt, and when she made to sit up the screaming pain in her leg became much more important than retrieving memories that probably wouldn't help her remedy her current circumstances.

She had not become what she was without perseverance, though, and she sat up despite agony and dizzy confusion and nausea, worked her ankle a bit, flexed her leg, determined that she likely had some excessively deep puncture wounds that had somehow missed the tendon. Her armor was gone, but that wasn't a surprise; the neat bandages round her temple and wound up her calf under the soft pants she'd been dressed in were, though. Also unusual was that she appeared to have been thrown into a cell without guards, she who was the strongest of her kind, she who decimated enemy armies all by herself. The leg wound was unimportant, because she could force her body to go on in spite of it thanks to the same power that made her strong enough to bend the bars of her prison with naught but her bare hands. Still, though - how had she ended up in the Weapons' dungeons? Rolling her shoulders to gauge the wound on her back, she tried to remember.

Stein had shown up of a sudden, she recalled that much, interrupting the plans she'd been making with Black Star, Kilik, and Ox for the upcoming battle against the Weapon army and the Thompson sisters. He'd taken her away because Medusa had sent him with a special mission, had somehow gained the knowledge and specific charms needed to breach the Weapons' great stronghold, and they'd traveled on vector arrows to a location that she couldn't have found again on pain of death. She remembered that, remembered scaling the walls in the night and finding not a ruined necropolis but a sleeping fortress-city, and then -

Fire, and blackness. Stein had told her to make for the great central temple while he drew attention away from her, and - well. That had been foolish of her, trusting him. Perhaps Medusa was right when she mused that her battle-mages might be better off not knowing their bloodlines, since even the concept of a mother and a father engendered a certain level of implicit affinity. Not that that had been the real reason she'd trusted him this time, though; that had been the talisman he'd carried, imbued with a not-inconsequential amount of Medusa's magic intended to transport them to their destination via vector arrows.

She'd been betrayed, then, and if she couldn't remember how she'd ended up imprisoned instead of dead then she wouldn't dwell on it. After a minute of staring at the wall across from her she shrugged, mouth pulling into a thin line of pain and anger, and forced herself to her feet, chains clattering. The racket didn't summon a guard, though, and her frown deepened. Were they so unconcerned, then?

She was halfway to the bars of her cell when a lanky, red-haired man strode into view, accompanied by the sharp-edged sound of Weapon magic - scythe blades, in his case, that flowed from floor and ceiling and walls behind him to form an impenetrable, tightly-woven barrier.

"Death Scythe," she said, chin lifting as she came to a jolting halt, teeth clenched against the agony in her calf and trying to ignore the fact that she was bound hand and foot in the presence of one of her enemy's strongest.

"Maka," he said, and her name coming from that mouth, delivered with equal parts constrained awe and grief, stopped any thoughts she'd been entertaining about wrenching the bars apart and doing her best to electrocute him.

Instead she began formulating a plan that involved setting bits of him on fire until he told her how he knew her name and why he said it the way he did, and her fingers were twitching a bit with the urge to call flame when he gave her a bitter smile and shook his head.

"Don't try," he said, green eyes rueful, cautious, strangely pained as he settled himself on the rough bench that faced her cell, setting aside the bucket he'd been carrying. She realized as he moved that he was speaking in her tongue and doing it well, without much trace of the barbarous accent she would have expected. Somehow it made her distrust him even more, if that were possible. "Medusa made it harder when she started binding you all to her with spell-inked tattoos, but we can still cut you off from her magic, and you've got nothing to draw on now except your own strength. Don't try, Maka; it will only kill you faster."

"You're lying," she snapped, because she knew of no _link_; her power was her own, "and I am not concerned with hastening my demise. Surely you and your demented heathen high priest will be sacrificing me soon enough. What did Stein promise you in return for his safety?"

"You," the man said, so much grim hurt in his expression and voice that Maka drew up short, some of her indignant anger evaporating into confusion. "You, and the lives of all those who entered the city with you. I hadn't expected to hear that you were alive and in the dungeons - the original agreement was that he would place you in a position to be killed, and that was enough. With you gone, Kid believed that the Thompsons could take Black Star and Kilik, perhaps with some help from Azusa. As to your power, try if you must. There is precious little you can do, now; you're barely more than human, albeit with an impressive amount of combat training."

Sid was dead, then, after spending most of Maka's lifetime teaching her to fight. She swallowed hard and reached for her power, for fire and lightning and blinding light, intending to take what revenge she could for her brethren - if the man was her only guard, as it seemed, she could kill him and smash her way free, set everything aflame and run -

Pain screamed from the wound on the back of her neck down her spine, arced through every nerve until her stomach rebelled, and she was only dimly aware of how badly it hurt when her knees hit the floor because she was too busy dry heaving.

That would explain the hollow ache in her chest.

Maka was still trying to make her stomach stop heaving when the bucket that her supposed guard had been carrying hit the ground in front of her, and when she rolled her eyes up to give him a feral glare he only gave her a stern scowl in response.

"Don't try it," he said, and something about his tone, about the way he moved as if constantly on the verge of whiplash violence, made her stay still. She told herself it was because she was wounded and weak and sick.

The bucket was full of cold clear water, and Death Scythe dropped a rough cloth on the lip of the bucket on his way out. Cramping stomach or no, the inside of her mouth tasted like bile and old blood, and she barely managed to refrain from dunking her head into the water with no regard for keeping it clean or maintaining appearances. Seemliness, she reminded herself. Even in chains, even imprisoned and wounded and dying by inches, she had a reputation to maintain. She dipped her head to the water and took great gulps, filling what emptiness she could with water before she took the cloth and scrubbed what she could reach of her face and hands, skirting around the bandages on her temple, trying to ignore the dizzy throbbing in her skull and leg.

"Let me tell you a story," the man said, settled on the bench again.

"As if I could stop you," she said, smoothing the cold cloth over the back of her neck with a sigh of relief before bending to drink again.

"If you didn't want to listen, I wouldn't bother you," he said, green eyes shuttered when she looked up at him again, and she rolled one shoulder, noncommital.

"I doubt you came down here just to bring me water, Death Scythe," she said, eyeing the barrier he'd created. "And I must admit to a certain amount of curiosity as to why you would come, if it were not to abuse me in some way, or perhaps haul me away to serve as sacrifice to your dark god. I'd also like to know how it is you came to speak my language so well. Most of your kind can't manage it at all, and those who do are barely intelligible at best." She settled back, stretching her injured leg along the floor with a wince. "Feel free, so long as it isn't bragging about how many of my siblings you've killed."

"I'm not interested in spending more time fixating on this endless war than I already do," he said, something familiar in the discontented slant of his mouth. "And don't call me Death Scythe. That is what I am, not my name. My name is Spirit."

Maka nodded, scrubbed at her fingers with the cloth for lack of anything better to do and because her nails were filthy, and gave a sort of abortive half-shrug. "All right."

"So," Spirit said, leaning forward a bit, elbows propped on his knees, "I'm sure you know some of this story. Before you were born your mother was sent on a mission with some of the other best and brightest of her kind. They were to find a path through the mountains and into the forest below that was both usable and unguarded."

"She found it," Maka said, more than familiar with tales of her legendary mother's exploits. "And she and Stein created the magical gate that we use to get from Medusa's tower to the front. We both know this story. Here's something I bet you didn't know: it's an ongoing rumor that I was conceived on that mission, and Medusa let my mother keep me because she and Stein were prodigies."

Spirit stared at her for a very long minute then, looking rather bemused underneath his blank surprise. "No, I hadn't heard that one," he said, the corner of his mouth twitching up. "Perhaps you know, then, that she was gone for quite a long time on that mission. That was because her team found the pass, but that winter was particularly bad. Suzume was the only one who lived, and it was a near thing. She crawled out of the mountains half-dead and stumbled over a little village, and decided to stay near it until she was strong enough to move on. That was where I found her, and now we reach the part of this story that I _haven't told anyone,_ because I'm no more keen on being executed than you are. Don't think to try and use it against me, either - they'd never believe such a story from the Scourge."

"I'm not _stupid_," Maka snapped, picking a bit at the bandages on her temple and wondering if it would be worth undoing them to clean the wound. "Tell me whatever incriminating information you must. We both know that it won't do me any good."

Spirit gave her another odd smile, satisfaction and arrogance in strange mixture. "I was young then, and they'd sent me to the village to look into reports that supplies were going missing. I wasn't doing much good in that capacity, but I'd also been hunting down a feral behemoth that had been causing trouble. I found her when I found it, because her magic had driven it mad and it had finally found her. She killed it with a single strike of lightning," he added, an almost dreamy smile flitting across his face.

"She passed out right after, weak as she was, and I was too surprised and stupid to do anything but take her to the nearest healer, who happened to be a witch. That was for the best, though. The witch altered her link to Medusa so that it would let through enough power to keep her alive, but not enough for her to do much of anything. It wasn't until she woke up days later that I realized I'd accidentally captured the Reaper."

"You had her at your mercy and didn't kill her when you figured out who she was? _Why_ do they call you one of their champions?" Was all Maka could respond with, imagining herself in a similar situation and unable to think of a course of action that didn't involve immediate execution of a notorious enemy.

"She wasn't a threat any more," Spirit said, and the way he looked at her - with something like _pity, _fuck him, she needed no pity from a _Weapon_ - made her want to punch him all over again. "Why would I kill a woman who could barely manage to get out of bed on her own when I knew she'd never pose a threat again?"

"She was the _enemy_," Maka spat, willing herself to relax when she tensed enough to make her leg hurt. "Did you miss the fact that she'd been killing your people since she was old enough to learn to fight? I never would have thought that one of my enemy's greatest warriors would be so sentimental. Perhaps I was wrong to think that meeting you on the battlefield would be a grim day."

He gave her a rather unkind smirk. "My weak sentimental side is the reason you exist," he said, sitting back and giving her an arch look. "I sent back a rather vague report and stayed with Suzume, and it was a long time indeed before Medusa sent anyone to look for her. By then we had _you_, and I imagine you can figure out how _that _happened."

There was an incredulous pause in which Maka wondered if perhaps the man's grasp of her language wasn't as functional as it seemed, but he kept watching her, expression expectant and grave and maybe a little nervous, so Maka swallowed a bit of water and found her voice.

"Stein might have betrayed me, but I know who sired me," she said, shifting from scornful to irritated, wishing that, if it couldn't make this man _go away_, sheer strength of will could at least be enough to make the pain in her head subside. "Why would I believe such a ludicrous story when I know for a fact that Medusa would have destroyed the kind of abomination you describe? Why would you expect me to believe that my mother would ever have allowed a Weapon to violate her? My bloodline has been documented since its inception, Death Scythe, and Medusa's records are inviolate. Who are you to tell me otherwise?"

"Your _father_," Spirit said in a furious growl entirely unlike his previous tone, and Maka sat back a bit, swallowed hard, and remembered with painful clarity that she was in chains and in a cell and completely without her magic. "Where do you think I learned your bizarre language? Suzume and I were going to change everything. We were going to overthrow everything in this world that had wronged us because it's not just Medusa who spews poison to her people. Then Stein came, and we didn't have much choice because that man is a two-faced _monster_. He took Suzume and he took you, and somehow he convinced Medusa to let both of you live. I'll thank him for that, but one good deed, even if it was saving the best thing I ever managed to do in this life, is not enough to overshadow everything else he's done. I'm sure you don't see any reason to believe me, and I'm not going to sit here and argue about it. I've told you the truth."

"The best thing?" she scoffed, almost laughing. "If you believe what you've told me, you sired a veritable monster so far as your war is concerned. You gave the enemy its strongest weapon. What kind of strange, indecisive traitor are you? Fall in love with your enemy and continue to kill her kin? Has it pained you all these years, knowing you might face me in battle? Were you too weak to start your revolution without someone else giving you the courage? You could _never_ be my father, no matter _how_ good a warrior you are. I'd have been culled in childhood if I'd inherited that kind of weakness."

He stood in a violent rush, scowling, hurt, and dug in his coat pocket, withdrawing something that glimmered in the low light.

"Your mother told me to give you this if ever we met," he said, fingers tangling in what looked like a fine chain. "Believe me or don't, label me weak if it helps you avoid examining your beliefs, but I'll tell you one thing. Stein betrayed you to get away from Medusa, because she was making him experiment with that power source beneath her ill-gotten tower. She doesn't know what she's meddling with. It was driving him mad and he did the only thing he could think of to save himself. If she continues to manipulate it, she may yet kill us all."

Maka snorted and regretted it, because it made her head throb. "I'm sure that your kind attaches some great ritual significance to it, but it's nothing but a natural, if rare, concentration of magic. Don't worry about it, and don't think that Stein is anything more than a common traitor. I wouldn't advise you place any trust in him."

"His continued existence depends on his cooperation," Spirit said, green eyes boring into hers. "I would suggest you consider the same, daughter. There is some slim chance that you could come out of this alive, but Kid wants to find out if he can sacrifice you and bring you back as a lich the way he did the Thompsons, and, barring that, execute you. Even if we left you here you'd die within a few weeks from lack of power. I would suggest you start acting cooperative."

"Fuck off, _Papa,_" Maka snarled, and his face hardened into sharp anger that made him look almost threatening enough to be the man her siblings called Death Scythe.

The scythe blades blocking off her cell disappeared as he turned, and just before he strode away he threw the bit of metal he'd been holding into her cell, where it crumpled into a glittering heap against the side of the bucket. "Die here, then," he said, back to her and fair vibrating with tension. "I hadn't expected to see you alive again, anyway, so I suppose I should be glad to have had that much, at least."

He strode away, shoulders tight, and after a minute Maka reached around the bucket and collected the bit of chain, realizing as she did that it was a finely-wrought collar, still holding on to the shreds of magic that had been forged into it. She went very quiet and very still when she recognized the insignia worked into the metal, and didn't move for some time after.


	3. Quite a shame that it goes this way

I know this took a while, and I'm sorry about that. I wrote this in 500 word chunks over the course of a month or something, and I'm quite surprised that it was mostly coherent all the way through. My brain likes to refuse to let me write when there are details I need to figure out, even if I'm not AWARE of them, which is part of why it took so long. The rest is laziness.

Thanks as ever goes to the poor saps I rope into proofreading for me, including but not limited to Marsh, VictoriaPyrrhi, ProMa, and Livi.

Next chapter is gonna be FUN.

* * *

It was not the noise Spirit made as he strode past the cell Soul was sleeping in that woke him; rather, it was the feel of the man's power when the wall of scythe blades appeared that jolted him out of sleep, skin prickling and confused as he bit back curses at the pain in his shoulder. Why he felt the need to stay quiet, Soul couldn't have explained, but he did - and those feelings weren't usually wrong. So he stretched out along the hard cot as best he could, shuffled the threadbare blanket a bit so he could roll over without exposing his back to the chill air of the dungeon, and pressed his good hand to the rough stone of the wall. If Spirit was constructing temporary barriers, something _had_ to be going on, and there had been more than one time in his life where being in possession of blackmail-worthy information had saved Soul a great deal of abuse. He didn't really _like_ having to resort to blackmail and petty threats to defend himself, but needs must from time to time.

It took only the tiniest twist of power to manipulate the stone digging into his palm into letting him hear the conversation in the other cell, so little that he doubted Spirit would have noticed it even if he'd been paying attention, which he wasn't; he was too busy having some kind of emotional conversation with the Scourge _in her own language_. That was interesting. Soul was aware of no reason why a Weapon should be apparently fluent in that twisting, lyric tongue - the occasional battle-mage who turned traitor was expected to learn the language of his benefactors as a matter of course - but here they were anyway.

The sound of the woman retching rudely interrupted any musings regarding Spirit's motivations, and Soul swallowed hard against sympathetic nausea. She must have tried to set the Death Scythe alight and found out the hard way that her borrowed power was no longer there for her to command, a stunt that had probably taken a full day off her remaining lifespan. Soul heard the cell door open, heard something hit the floor and didn't need to understand the words to know that when Spirit spoke a moment later he was issuing a warning. There was no sound of a struggle after that, or, indeed, any sound at all other than dry-heaving and the slosh of water that meant Spirit had probably brought her a drink. That was, Soul supposed, unexpectedly kind of him - but in light of whatever was going on, not particularly shocking.

They traded words, briefly - and shadow take him but that woman could make her mild, pleasant voice sound truly bloodcurdling - before Spirit began to speak at length. Soul, still exhausted, surprised himself by dozing off, startling back to full awareness some time later thanks to a combination of words spoken in tones of barbed loathing and the sound of something metal clattering across the floor. He didn't dare move, though, because hard on the heels of that the scythe-blades retracted into the wall and Spirit left, power buzzing around him. If the Death Scythe found out that Soul had been awake for his strange conversation, there was no telling what he'd do. The man was unpredictable and ruthless, and Soul had no desire at all to find out what his fate might be if he gave Spirit a reason to think he was a threat.

Unfortunately, holding still so Spirit wouldn't realize he was awake meant staying in one place for a while in case Spirit came back. Soul wasn't interested in getting out from under the blanket if he was going to be trapped in the dungeon until it was safe to be seen leaving; might as well be warm - and he also didn't really care to come face to face with the Scourge in a foul mood, regardless of whether or not she was still capable of incinerating him with a flick of her wrist. Those details considered, he stretched out, undid the little bit of magic he'd worked on the stone - a tiny thing, and an application that Soul wasn't certain any of the other Weapons would have considered a valid use of their power even in the event they realized it was possible - and settled in for a bit of a wait.

Which, of course, turned into him falling asleep again. He woke who knew how much later, groggy and desperately wanting a bath, and of course tried to roll out of bed using his bound arm, which resulted in pain and panic in that order - and then more pain when he tumbled to the floor. Growling profanity under his breath, Soul picked himself up with his good arm this time, settling back on his heels when he got upright to remind himself that his balance wasn't the same with one arm strapped to his chest. That gave him time to realize both that he was hungry _again _and that his clothes felt bonded to his skin, so he must have slept quite a bit, though of course being underground gave him no indication of it.

It took a minute, but he ventured out, turned, and deliberately strode over to the Scourge's cell as though he owned the place - wouldn't do to show the enemy how out-of-sorts he was, let alone how much she still scared him on pretty much the same level that Kid did - and found her, incongruously, asleep. He pulled a face, slumping back against the wall and indulging in a jaw-cracking yawn before pushing back off the stone and turning towards the exit, which was little more than a bright spot at the end of a very long, very empty hallway that echoed with death-magic. Trudging along, Soul wondered what Medusa told her soldiers about Lord Death's power and snorted under his breath as he concluded that it was probably all ravening zombies and twisted abominations and barbaric sacrifices. Not that that wasn't _part_ of it, boy was it ever, but there was also the sleeping necropolis that whispered in his dreams. That was probably why he'd slept so much; it was quiet in the depths, serene, and the ambient power had a way of lulling anyone who spent an appreciable amount of time around it.

All semblance of inner quiet vanished, however, when he made it at last to the guardroom and found his brother seated at the rough table, pale head bent over a bit of paper.

"Wes," he said after a moment, and got a negligent wave in response.

For approximately thirty seconds Soul stood still, bristling, trying to remember to keep his breathing even and not gouge his palm with his fingernails and above all _not_ to punch his brother, particularly with his bad arm, until at last Wes set down his pen and turned around with a tired, sideways smile.

"I had supper left in your room not long ago," Wes said, throwing an arm over the back of the rough chair as he twisted the rest of the way around to face Soul. "Go ahead and get a good meal in you. I think I can handle one lone battle-mage who's had her wings clipped." His eyes shifted, came to rest on Soul's bandaged arm. "Perhaps have Nygus check on that arm while you're at it."

"It's fine," Soul said, gruff, waiting for Wes to slip up and give away the real reason he was being kind. "I just need to rest it while it heals. What are you doing down here? Surely Kid has better uses for you than - whatever you're doing."

The tired smile turned a bit wry. "And yet here I have been sent," Wes said, spreading his hands wide. "Perhaps Kid felt it was the least he could do for the man who brought the Scourge low. Having her alive is a great boon, you know. If he can raise her - "

"He won't be able to control her," Soul snapped, covering the fear that jolted from his heart to his belly with a scowl. "He'll try to make a lich of her and it _won't work_, her heart would never let itself be confined and controlled. Tell him, Wes. If he raises her and she turns, her revenant could destroy us all and all this war will have meant _nothing._"

"Fear doesn't suit you, Soul," Wes said, tilting his head sideways just enough to make Soul snort. "As if I could dissuade Kid of anything. As if any Weapon could best him in a battle of wills. I'll agree, though: I wouldn't expect one such as her to submit voluntarily, even knowing that her death is unavoidable." Wes glanced away, and Soul wondered what would happen if he told his brother about Spirit's visit, wondered if he even wanted to, blackmail material or no.

"Go," Wes said after a moment, eyes still on the wall, face now in careful profile. "Get your supper, brother. Have a bath. I'll still be here when you get back."

"Fine," Soul said, not interested in wasting any more time with his turncoat brother, and left. The walk back up through the ossuaries didn't seem nearly as long as the grueling trip down, but that was to be expected; he was neither exhausted nor carrying a body, after all. As he ascended, the grave-calm of the bone galleries dissipated, though, replaced by the din of the living in much the same way that the underground chill fell from his skin when he reached the main floor of the fortress.

The guards didn't try to stop him this time, content instead to watch him pass in a way that Soul wasn't certain he'd ever encountered - uncertainty and fear he was accustomed to, but not this strange, confused deference. Rumor got around quickly, it seemed. He did his best not to stare back at them as he trudged through the vaulted halls leading to the ossuary, eyes studiously straight ahead by the time he reached the soldiers' quarters that sat between it and the rest of the fortress.

Said quarters also happened to sit beneath the tower he'd lived most of his adult life in, which had begun when he'd turned eleven and been given over to the soldiers for training in how to die while doing as much damage as possible to the enemy. Soul picked up the pace as soon as he got close, and managed to make it to the tower entrance without running into anyone he was obligated to talk to. He let go a tense breath when the heavy door shut behind him, leaning against the rough wood in relief and happier to see his drafty tower than he'd have ever expected. He was away from the Scourge, Spirit hadn't tried to skin him alive for overhearing things he shouldn't, Wes hadn't tried to deliver him to Kid for conversion, and he was out of that damn dungeon. If his shoulder would stop hurting and cramping in protest at both his injury and his body's fast-forward attempts to heal it, life would be approaching tolerable.

Couldn't have everything, he supposed. At least there should be still-warm food waiting for him when he managed to drag himself up the tower stairs, which was more than he could ever remember getting from his brother. With the idea of food - Wes had said supper, so he supposed it was evening - and a bath fixed firmly in his mind, Soul pushed himself away from the door and began the long ascent to his quarters. They'd stuffed Wes at the top of the tower, too, some years before Soul had joined him, but of course that hadn't lasted. Wes was _smarter_, knew when he was beaten, he'd said. Was tired of being an outcast.

Was _scared_, Soul knew, and couldn't blame him for that because madness was a constant lurking threat that made his blood run dark garnet red-black on the bad days, days when the thought of tearing everything apart brick by brick elicited smothered, gleeful giggles and sharp smiles that showed too much tooth. Those days he was glad there was a war on, because it gave him an outlet for what might very well have turned into the blindly murderous tendencies everyone seemed so concerned about. As if it was his fault that he'd been born to a cursed bloodline. As if any of them could have even _dreamed_ of keeping it in check as well as he and Wes did.

Soul managed to shake off what was on its way to becoming another bout of sullen anger on the way up the stairs, reminding himself that he was the hero now, that they couldn't write off what he'd done no matter how they tried. Oh, it might have no effect aside from 'redeeming' a bit of his heritage, but he'd take that. He'd take it a thousand times over if it meant they'd treat him like he deserved to be there.

Supper was a covered tray on his desk, and Soul dropped into his rough chair in shock when he lifted the lid and found thick slices of roast beneath, covered in rich gravy, and a variety of vegetables he wasn't sure he'd ever seen in one place before if one excluded the work he'd done in the kitchens as a child, peeling endless potatoes and cutting up ingredients he never got to taste. Shock gave way to hunger quickly, though, and Soul snatched up his utensils - or would have, if his right arm hadn't still been bound tight to his chest. The attempt at motion hurt, but he didn't care; his arm was functional no matter how much it hurt, and he cursed his luck and the Scourge and doctors in general as he dug at the bandages with his left hand. That lasted only a few seconds, however, because his shirt was too much in the way for him to really free his arm - he heaved himself back out of the chair with a growl and grabbed for the hem of the shirt with his good hand, contorting awkwardly as he struggled to get it above his head one-handed. The doctor had helped him put a shirt on over his bandages on purpose, he knew, to keep him from doing _exactly_ what he was trying to do.

Maybe he'd just eat the damn food with one hand and put his stupid sharp teeth to use for once. Not like there was anyone around to sneer at him for eating like an animal and it didn't matter _anyway_, because he was the _hero_ and they could all _choke_ on it -

The door slammed open just as Soul realized with a little panicky jolt that he was kind of stuck in his shirt, and several things happened in rapid succession:

Spirit barged in with absolutely no regard for anything but his own very obvious panic, which choked his voice into something rather high and fast as he said, "I need to talk to you," but Soul wasn't paying much attention to that, seeing as he was occupied with his own weird claustrophobic state;

Soul, already halfway to solving his predicament in the most excessive way possible, stopped trying to remind himself that it was really a very childish way to react to getting tangled up in a shirt and let his power go, which shredded his shirt courtesy of the scythe-blades that erupted from his skin and also made Spirit shriek a bit in surprise when matching blades clawed their way out of the floor at his feet in an attack that could and _had_ killed several battle-mages at once;

Spirit, his whole life a soldier and _much_ stronger than Soul thanks to the fact that Kid fed him witch-souls, shrugged off the attack without much effort and counterattacked reflexively, darting forward to catch Soul with a roundhouse kick that sent him flying towards the tower's stone wall, no longer rough-hewn blocks but a fucking _cluster_ of vicious blades;

Soul's world went red, and then black.

When his vision cleared and the red faded Soul found himself staring at Spirit's face in extreme closeup, not because the man was trying to retrieve him from the blades he'd been attempting to impale him on but because Soul apparently had him by the throat. He blinked in surprise a bit, swallowed hard imagining the trouble he was in, and eased off with deliberate, slow movements, wincing when he realized how deep his fingers had been buried in the soft flesh of Spirit's neck.

"I apologize, Death Scythe," he said, tension in every muscle, waiting for another attack as he lowered his good hand and edged away, noting as he did that the scythe blades had all disappeared and that, somehow, his scant furniture was still intact. It hadn't been a drawn-out struggle, then; he hadn't lost himself for very long at all. A relief, on multiple levels; if he'd killed Spirit, Soul doubted he would have survived the night, and if he hadn't regained control quickly, well - he still wouldn't have survived the night. Probably.

"Ah," Spirit said, and dissolved into rough coughs for a moment, rubbing at his neck but, for the moment, seemingly not interested in avenging Soul's assault upon his person. Soul kept putting space between them, at least until his legs hit his desk, at which point he set his feet in a stance that would let him fight or flee quickly if it came to it. If he was quick, he could probably soften the stone of the floor a bit, catch Spirit's feet -

"Let's try this again," Spirit said, hoarse. Soul snapped out of his thoughts, tracking the other man's movements as he swallowed and straightened up, clearing his throat to ward off another coughing fit. "I apologize; I shouldn't have come charging in." His green eyes were calculating and a bit wary, looking down at Soul from what was, even now that Soul was grown, a height difference of several inches. "Let's consider this whole incident behind us, shall we?"

"Yes," Soul said, drawing the word out, suspicious. "Let's. What do you want?"

Spirit pushed himself away from the wall, straightening his collar in the most casual way possible, eyes anywhere but on Soul as he took in the narrow room and at length selected Soul's bed as a suitable seat. Soul watched him in silence, still waiting for an attack, and wished desperately that he'd had time to eat his dinner before being forced into strange situations involving one of the most powerful living Weapons.

"I want you to understand the situation that you're in," Spirit said, mouth twisting around the words in a way that meant he wasn't really telling the truth.

"No," Soul said, a bit sharper than he'd intended. "That might be your excuse to come up here and it might even be important, but that isn't what you _want_. You came running up here in some kind of panic, and you wanted to _talk _to me? What do you want, Death Scythe? What could I of all people possibly be able to do for you?"

"Do you understand the concept of checkmate?" Spirit asked, and that twist to his mouth was gone - he was all grim pragmatism now, and Soul's hands tightened into fists as he parsed the question.

"I hope you aren't here to play chess," he said, wincing a bit when the act of making a fist pulled at his injured shoulder now that it was free of the bandages that had been keeping it immobile.

"I am here to tell you that you have been put into a corner from which there is no escaping unscathed," Spirit said, crossing his arms over his chest, and Soul wished desperately that he had a way to know just what the nature of the man's conversation with the Scourge had been. "Your brother is down in the dungeons. Do you know why? Do you know why he went to the trouble of having you sent a dinner that he himself, as one of Lord Death's trusted servants, might have eaten? Have you even begun to consider the fact that you've damned yourself by making yourself a hero?"

"In _what way_," Soul snapped, bristling, already taking hold of the stone behind Spirit so as to mold it into blades, "has my capturing the greatest enemy we've ever faced _damned_ me? Is it so horrible that now they - that _you_ - will have to at least fake some respect?"

"Tell me," Spirit said, fingers tangling together but eyes riveted on Soul, "what does Kid do for those who render him great services?"

Soul stared at him in silence, and after a minute the color drained from his face.

"Now you see," Spirit said, and gave him a crooked kind of smile that was really too bleak to deserve the title.

It was - it took a moment for Soul to find his voice again, to force words out past the screaming horror that had lodged in his throat because Wes might have been afraid of madness but Soul was heart-stoppingly terrified of losing his heart and free will, of letting the grave swallow up his passion in exchange for safety.

"So," he managed at last, voice jittery and bitter, "did you come here to gloat, then, or was it just to ruin my dinner?"

"I came here to offer you an alternative, of sorts," Spirit said, back to giving him a grim, shuttered stare.

"Of sorts?" Soul asked, tilting his head a bit to one side, eyes narrowing. "What do you even care, Death Scythe? You should be celebrating the fact that Kid has me cornered at long last. What's in this little arrangement for you?"

Spirit stared at him in silence for long enough that Soul started to fidget, fingers itching with the repressed urge to strike. At last the man moved - stood, body a long line of implicit violence, and gestured towards the door, which erupted into a wall of blades, eyes never leaving Soul's.

"Everything I am about to tell you is information that is grounds for execution," he said, hands settling into the pockets of his coat, shoulders a taut line. "Yes, I have a viable way for you to avoid becoming Kid's creature, but if you follow through with this it will likely mean your - exile, I'd think, considering. It may still end in death; I suppose it comes down to what you consider to be a worse fate than what Kid has planned."

"I'm not sure I can think of one," Soul said, eyeing the other man, skeptical despite his rattling heartbeat and sense of dread inevitability. "If you have some kind of alternative, by all means, Death Scythe. I don't understand why you're bothering, but I'm not going to stop you from attempting to save me, that's for damn sure."

"Mark me, this is not because I am _interested_ in saving you," Spirit said, sardonic. "This is an arrangement that is very much in my personal interests, and I have a certain degree of sympathy for your desire not to become a lich. Now. Whatever the battle-mages are, they can't survive without outside help because they aren't capable of tapping into any magical power outside themselves, and alone they don't have enough inborn magic to sustain their bodies' rather outrageous demands. Medusa compensates for this, and if we sever that link, they die. You know this. What no one else knows except for Kid, Lord Death, and a few others is that we Weapons can link with them, share our connection to the earth's magic. Together we are actually more than the sum or our parts, as they say; the battle-mage becomes more powerful than they were before, and the Weapon gains more than a few new abilities."

"If you're about to suggest what I think you are, that's got to be _exactly_ the opposite of everything Kid could ever want involving me _or _the Scourge," Soul said, expression turning incredulous. "Setting aside how _insane_ you sound, why would I want to even consider it where the Scourge is concerned? Made even _more _powerful, she'd kill all of us and walk away laughing."

"It's more complicated than that," Spirit said, pulling his hands out of his pockets so he could cross his arms over his chest. "It's not something just anyone can do; you have to have some base compatibility."

"And nothing says compatibility like stabbing someone, I know," Soul said, unable to suppress the smirk that crept across his face.

Spirit - shrugged, kind of, gave a surprisingly uncomfortable roll of one shoulder, and looked away again. "It isn't very far different from how I met her mother," he said.

Full stop. Soul stared at him, mouth gaping wider every minute, until Spirit gave him a glare that could have cracked marble.

"You're a _traitor_," Soul stuttered, shocked enough that he sat down on his desk. "I don't even know if there's a _word_ for what you are. You _fathered_ the bane of our people and you want _me_, the blood-traitor's spawn, to help keep her from being executed. Are you _serious? _ Nothing about this strikes you as _completely ridiculous?_"

"Would I tell you something like this in jest?" Spirit actually rolled his eyes. "Not that anyone would believe you if you went around telling them. I can assure you that you would hardly be my _first_ choice, but you are most certainly my _only_ choice. Who else could I possibly ask this of without ensuring my execution but you, who no one would believe even if you _did_ try to betray me? Besides, if Kid takes her, you stand to lose the most: they'll execute me, but you will still be a lich, and I think we needn't argue which of those fates is the worse."

"Let me just," Soul said, and stopped, shook his head, pushed back off his desk. "You want me to see if I can form some kind of mystic bond with your - _daughter_ - because you don't want to find out if Kid can raise her as a lich and learn your secret?"

"I don't want her _dead_," Spirit snapped, and Soul caught himself sidestepping because he'd expected the floor to turn to blades. "I want her away from here, because at least Medusa will let her have a warrior's death. You understand? I don't want her to go through whatever Kid has in store, I don't want her _here_, and since I can't send her away from this _hell_ that has become our lives, I can at least return her to the side in this war that will torment her _least._"

"So you want me to do this thing, or try it, and if it succeeds we might _all_ die when she blows us all apart - and if it fails she and I are _certainly _dead and your secret's probably out. Kid _does_ get his victims' memories when he raises them, doesn't he? You're committed now, Death Scythe. If I fail, you're doomed and so is the Scourge. If I succeed, what's to stop her?"

"You can control, to some extent, how much power is shared," Spirit said, still looking at him as if calculating the most efficient way to cut him into the smallest pieces with one attack. "I don't think you can completely cut them off once you're linked, but you can keep them from getting anything but the bare minimum if your will is strong." He gave Soul a very hard stare that held little of confidence and much of grim resignation. "Yours had better be. I suspect it must, considering your bloodline and the fact that you haven't killed any of us yet."

"Is any one of us actually stronger than she is?" He couldn't fathom. She was undefeated, horrifying, a killer of countless Weapons, fury incarnate in the form of a slim woman who wielded fire and lightning with profligate skill.

"You had better be," Spirit said, and that was that. "If you can bind and control her, Kid will let the both of you live, because as a lich she would be much diminished even if he _could_ manage to bend her to his will, and if he kills you once you're linked she will - go mad, perhaps. Probably not die, she's too strong. The results would be unpredictable and messy. If this little venture fails, I'm sure he'll take you both, but I've at least convinced him that she can keep you sane in the event of success. At least you can be _useful_, no?"

"And if this succeeds?" Soul asked, because he knew - there was no doubt, now - that Spirit wasn't going to settle for merely saving his daughter from the immediate threat of Kid's attentions.

"I'll figure it out," Spirit said, voice an angry growl, decades of resentment and pain etched into his face. It was the first time Soul could remember thinking that the man looked his age, even if there was no grey in the bright red of his hair and no enduring lines on his face. "If it works, she'll be safe for a while, long enough to get both of you out of here."

"Are you suggesting I go with her to _Medusa?_ Is there _any_ aspect of this that actually involves sanity, or am I just a sacrifice with a time delay for the sake of your precious butcher of a daughter?"

Soul was becoming deeply, bone-achingly tired of having Spirit look at him like he was simple. "You would hardly be the first Weapon traitor, assuming she decided to return," he said, voice filled with the casual disdain that seemed to be everyone's default tone for speaking to Soul. "With her to vouch for you, who would object?"

"Why would she _bother_ vouching for me, once she's back with her people? Can't they just," he waved his hands in a vague gesture that could have meant anything, "fix her? Remake her bond to Medusa so she doesn't need me?"

"You think they'd fix her?" Spirit laughed, bitter. "No, I think not. They'd find out about you if she told them, and that would be the end of it. She's more than smart enough to figure _that_ out. You'll be fine. So what do you say, Soul Eater - will it be the Scourge, or will you pledge yourself to undying servitude to Lord Death?"

Bind himself forever to the person who represented everything he'd been taught to hate and fear and destroy, the woman who killed better and stronger Weapons than he without mercy or remorse or seemingly much effort, and very likely ensure that he would never be welcome among his people again - or die, and be reborn a thrall to a death god, passion and free will subsumed, any hope at becoming _better_, at making everyone realize that he wasn't Ragnarock incarnate, abandoned in favor of admitting weakness, of giving up -

"Let me eat my damn food," he snarled, and saw a tiny light of victory, of hope, flare in Spirit's jade-green eyes. "Let me have _one good meal_ in my _entire life_, and then fine. I'll try it. But let me have this much at least."

"Of course," Spirit said, and even _bowed_ a little. "I'll be waiting for you at the tower base. Don't rush on my account."

"I fucking won't," Soul said, teeth bared again, and Spirit gave him a rather haughty, distinctly displeased look before he left, scythe-blades retracting as he did.


End file.
